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project 2025
Judge Indefinitely Blocks Trump Admin From Firing Federal Workers During Shutdown
An attorney for unions suing over layoffs called the order "a major blow to the Trump-Vance administration's unlawful attempt to make the Project 2025 playbook a reality by targeting our nation’s career public servants."
Oct 28, 2025
US District Judge Susan Illston on Tuesday again sided with federal workers over President Donald Trump's administration, indefinitely extending her block on the mass firing of government employees during the second-longest shutdown in history.
The San Francisco-based judge, nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, granted a preliminary injunction after previously issuing a temporary restraining order in a case launched late last month by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
"Today's ruling is another victory for federal workers and our ongoing efforts to protect their jobs from an administration hellbent on illegally firing them," said AFSCME president Lee Saunders in a statement. "Unlike the billionaires in this administration, public service workers dedicate themselves to serving their communities. These attempted mass firings would devastate both the workers and the people they serve. We will keep fighting to protect public service jobs against this administration's unlawful efforts to eliminate them."
During the shutdown, some federal workers are furloughed while others keep working; none are paid until the government reopens. With AFGE members facing such conditions, national president Everett Kelley on Monday called for Congress to "reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution," effectively siding with Trump and Republican lawmakers over Democrats who are fighting for legislation to protect the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans.
Just a day later, the union leader took aim at the president while welcoming Illston's new ruling. "President Trump is using the government shutdown as a pretense to illegally fire thousands of federal workers—specifically those employees carrying out programs and policies that the administration finds objectionable," he said. "We thank the court for keeping in place its order preventing the administration from firing workers due to the shutdown while we continue our litigation in court."
The judge's previous order was set to expire on Wednesday. After she issued it, several other unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU)—joined the case.
"This federal court decision is the result of organized labor standing together and leading the fight against the administration's unprecedented, politicized, and unlawful attack on federal workers' rights," declared IFPTE president Matt Biggs. "This is not only a win for the dedicated federal workforce who make up our nonpartisan civil service, but a victory for the American people and the public services our communities and our economy count on."
Tuesday's injunction prevents new reductions in force (RIFs) as well as the "implementation of the roughly 4,000 layoffs that agencies have already ordered," Government Executive reported.
According to the outlet:
The judge said she would clarify the exact scope of the order later on Tuesday in writing, but added in essence federal agencies "are enjoined from issuing any more RIF notices." Michael Velchik, a Justice Department attorney arguing on behalf of the administration, asked that cuts in the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Interior Department not be included in the order as those layoffs were underway long before the shutdown commenced. Illston said she would likely hold a further evidentiary hearing to make that determination.
USPTO already sent RIF notices to about 1% of its workforce, while Interior is planning to lay off thousands of workers.
The unions are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, framed the new injunction as a rejection of the Trump administration's purge of the federal government—which preceded the shutdown and is a key part of Project 2025, a sweeping policy playbook authored last year by various far-right figures, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
"This order is positive for the American people and a major blow to the Trump-Vance administration's unlawful attempt to make the Project 2025 playbook a reality by targeting our nation's career public servants, who work for all Americans," she said. "Our team is honored to represent the civil servants who are fighting back against President Trump's dangerous agenda, and to have won this crucial injunction that will help stop federal workers from continuing to be targeted and harassed by this administration during the shutdown."
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We Live in an Age of Public Bullying; What Can We Do About It?
Bullies, starting with super-bully Trump, need to “get some of their own medicine.”
Oct 19, 2025
Professor Emeritus Roddey Reid could have retired from the University of California San Diego to a life of deserved leisure. Instead, he has just published a handbook on "Political Intimidation and Public Bullying," which is increasingly dominating government, business, and civil society.
A guest this week on my radio show and podcast, Professor Reid was followed by Professor of Law Robert Fellmeth from the University of San Diego, a leading critic of unbridled anonymous speech fostered by Silicon Valley companies to boost profits.
Reid argues, Newt Gingrich launched this political onslaught in 1994 when he took over the GOP, led the Republicans to victory and became house speaker. “To be clear,” Reid continues, “political intimidation and public bullying are forms of psychological and physical political violence… meant to injure, humiliate, isolate, coerce, and even destroy opponents and entire communities.” These interviews should spark a civic rebellion.
The political intimidation operates in both open sight—from the belligerent bully-in-chief Donald Trump, and in the shadows with serious anonymous threats to members of Congress, judges, and their families. Combined, this viciousness has meant the difference in razor-thin votes in Congress. For example, the violent-talking, unfit secretary of defense being confirmed by the Senate. Other Trump nominees, who are also staggeringly inexperienced, totally obeisant to Trump’s wrecking of America in daily violation of the Constitution and federal laws, have also squeaked through Senate confirmation votes.
Political bullies focus on the weak, vulnerable, and powerless. You don’t see Trump going after and cutting programs servicing big-time corporate welfare kings through subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Reid is systemic and illustrative in his fast-paced book titled Confronting Political Intimidation and Bullying–privately published to make it very up to date through August 2025. In his last chapter, he conveys 13 strategies for citizens to use locally in response.
Cumulatively, this mass “callout” could descend upon Congress and state legislatures for a more systemic regulatory agenda.
Such legislative activity in Sacramento, California is already taking place to deal with the central delivery mode of such bullying—ANONYMITY—according to Professor Fellmeth. A long-time advocate of curbing the dangers of internet anonymity, including to children. Fellmeth urges a decisive ban on most anonymous assaults, leaving open some exceptions for whistleblowers and others with a need to protect their privacy and self-defense. To accomplish this selectivity has to involve regulation of the Silicon Valley profiteers and electric child molesters, led by the duplicitous Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of META. His major declared mission is to drive people from reality and live their lives in his virtual reality. A quick safeguard is to require anonymous speech to be pursued by law enforcement when it embodies physical threats and deliberate psychological torture. Naming and prosecuting the perpetrator will serve as deterrent to other potential anonymous predators.
Moreover, Fellmeth, who has written several articles on AI’s rapidly intensifying damage to youngsters, wants a regulation mandating identifying AI creations as such to forewarn the public. (See Professor Fellmeth’s article: "AI is already harming our children. Are California lawmakers going to do something?" January 30, 2025).
Bullies, starting with super-bully Trump, need to “get some of their own medicine.” That means those attacked with nicknames need to counter with nicknames, rebutting phony allegations and revealing the brutal impacts of their bullying on innocent people and families in both red and blue states by the vicious and cruel Trumpsters. Otherwise, the “Big Lies” without rebuttals become soliloquies, and therefore believable to millions of people and influence millions of susceptible voters. (See our prescient and useable book Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.)
Political bullies focus on the weak, vulnerable, and powerless. You don’t see Trump going after and cutting programs servicing big-time corporate welfare kings through subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
His latest vindictive cuts—some boomeranging against his own desired policies—were outlined in a recent Washington Post feature by lead reporter Hannah Natanson. His latest “firings”—suspended by a federal district judge in California–targeted services for students with disabilities, inspectors who check the defects of federal housing, and employees who help regulate hazardous waste and pollution, according to the Post. Frothing at the mouth, Trump called those fired “people that the Democrats want,” as if conservative Trump voters and their families want to breath and otherwise be exposed to dangerous pollutants. The same flailing dismissals will strike what the Post described “as vulnerable Americans–school children, low-income families, homeless people, and senior citizens.” Trump is steered by the seriously hateful Russell Vought, the White House Budget chief and preparer of the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s fascist dictatorship. It doesn’t matter that these and previous firings, without cause, are illegal in numerous ways. After all, didn’t Trump tell you in July 2019 that “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President”?
Here is an illustration of the institutionally insane wielding of the axe by indiscriminate haters that is hurting Trump voters and families alongside their Democratic counterparts. Trump and Vought want to layoff “workers with top secret clearance responsible for monitoring and protecting the United States from biological, chemical, and nuclear threats.” Earlier Trump and Vought drastically cut federal health scientists, safety regulators, and critical benefit dispensers in the tens of thousands.
Another instance of mindlessly cutting federal support for slammed hard-pressed community colleges, the recipient of lavish praise by Trump over the years for their job training curricula.
He is betraying Trump voters, with regular treachery! It is time for the people to say, “Donald Trump, you are fired.” (See my May 2, 2025 column: “YOU’RE FIRED!”–GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING TRUMP)
You can listen to these interviews on radio stations in central cities or by visiting RalphNaderRadioHour.com.
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No to Kings, Yes to Democracy
Tyrants don’t care about popularity—they care about obedience. Our answer must be refusal.
Oct 16, 2025
If I could speak directly to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, I’d ask him: Why are you so worried about citizens gathering this Saturday under the banner No Kings? You and other Republicans apparently are so freaked out that you’re trying to rebrand this most democratic of actions—a day for people to stand up for democracy—as a “hate America” protest. Pathetic. The name isn’t sticking, especially when the people taking to the streets revere America. We refuse to stand by as Donald Trump takes a sledge hammer to the country’s democratic foundation.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said it clearly: “The people coming out [for No Kings] love America. They love it so much that they are willing to take to the streets to proclaim: ‘We do not ever want a king in the United States.’” Writing in his Substack column Today’s Edition, activist-writer Robert Hubbell calls the citizen response “the immune reaction of a healthy body politic.”
Across the country, some 2,500 No Kings rallies—up nearly 400 from June—will echo that truth. We rally peacefully in devotion to the Constitution, to democracy, and the rule of law.
By the way, Mr. Speaker, be careful how you throw around a term like “antifa.” Currently, you’re displaying profound ignorance about what antifa means. First, there is no organization in the US by that name. Antifa is an idea; it’s short for anti-fascist. Media outlets would be well advised to remind viewers, listeners, and readers every time the word is used that it stands for anti-fascist.
No Kings Day is a line in the sand. Let’s meet the moment. Let’s honor the republic.
Meanwhile, although in 2024 Mr. Trump feigned not knowing what Project 2025 was, he knew it’s the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for running the government. The 900-page report is a manual for establishing US authoritarianism. It’s the most radical power grab in modern US history, and Trump is following its recommendations to a T. Purge civil servants. Check. Politicize the Justice Department. Check. Concentrate control of the government in the White House. Check. Ignore congressional authority. Check. Induce the ultra right-wing gang of six on the Supreme Court to be a compliant lapdog. Check.
Project 2025 is central to what No Kings proponents are challenging: a wannabe monarch’s wish list. Analysts from the New York Times and the Brookings Institute have called it “a governing manual for an American strongman.” It is, in essence, a coronation script. Historian Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, and an expert on resisting authoritarianism, warns that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” Patriotism, he reminds us, means admitting both that “it could happen here—and we will stop it.”
Trump’s latest delusion—that President Joe Biden ordered 274 FBI agents to infiltrate the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection—is proof of how unmoored from reality he’s become. He was president that day, watching in silence as his supporters tried to stage a coup, beating police and desecrating the Capitol. No coups, no kings.
When Trump pledged to send National Guard troops into Democratic-led cities—exposing the authoritarian reflex to militarize against dissent—Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker fought back, and a judge blocked the deployment. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom challenged federalization of his guard. And in Washington, DC, local leaders sued to end federal control.
These aren’t missteps—they’re tests Trump is administering. For democracy to pass, we must steel our resolve to resist at every step.
By indicting Former FBI director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump’s Justice Department has become his personal law firm, turning prosecution into payback. Governors and attorneys general nationwide are answering with lawsuits and injunctions. Their defiance proves the maxim that action is the antidote to anxiety.
Polls show cracks in the strongman façade. There is deep discontent with Trump’s economic and immigration policies, and more Americans want him to obey the Supreme Court.
Still, tyrants don’t care about popularity—they care about obedience. Our answer must be refusal.
On No Kings Day, millions will do just that. We’ll march for healthcare, for immigrant dignity, for equality before the law. We’ll expose Immigration and Customs Enforcement for what it is: America’s secret police. Meanwhile we’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder across races, genders, and zip codes, insisting with one voice: This is our democracy.
No Kings Day is a line in the sand. Let’s meet the moment. Let’s honor the republic. “We may have come here on different ships,” MLK is credited with saying, “but we’re in the same boat now.” Together, we’ll row toward the America that can yet be: no to kings; yes to democracy.
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